I Am a Hero – Volume 2

I didn’t think I’d be writing about this manga again so soon, but the scanlators released the entire second volume last night. As much as I hate waiting, this is really a manga you should read a volume at a time, rather than chapter by chapter.

I AM A HERO

「アイアムアヒーロー」
Hanazawa Kengo
Volume 2: Chapters 12-22

In the end of the last volume, Hideo steps out to go shooting at a gun range and stops by Tekko’s apartment. Unfortunately, his girlfriend is already infected with the mysterious disease mentioned on the news. Lets not beat around the bush, she’s a zombie. She attacks him, but he stops her using the front door as a shield. She gets her front teeth knocked out in the process, but she still bites him on the hand. Her determination to get Hideo is so strong that she nearly pulls his head through the mail slot and, with her head and torso stuck at the door, begins twisting her body up to reach for him with her feet. (This is as freakishly weird as it sounds. It doesn’t help that it looks like Tekko shat herself too.)

Hideo is, understandably, confused. He knows something wrong, but not what exactly. Through the door he can see that Tekko has discarded her beloved sensei’s manga and has placed Hideo’s manga on her shelf instead. He sees that her make up case is out and that there is a note addressed to him. It asks him to not look at her if she dies without her make up on. Reading that, Hideo reaches back to pick up his fallen cap and places it over Tekko’s face, apologizing for seeing her like that. He then pulls out a tissue and collects her fallen teeth.

Hearing someone, Hideo calls for help only to quickly discover that the approaching person is also in the same condition as Tekko. Tekko moves to attack this newcomer and the two disappear down the stairs. Hideo removes his head from the door and enters Tekko’s apartment. Here Hideo watches the news and learns of the “outbreak”, but quickly tries to find a channel about something else so he can keep his illusion of normalcy. When Tekko returns, dragging herself in sans an arm and leg, Hideo tries to act like things are normal and carries her to her bed (she bites him on the ear in the process).

At the same time, he knows she’s dead. Maggots are wriggling out from her eyes and mouth. He takes a knife from the kitchen and beheads her with it before covering her with a sheet. If there is one thing I really appreciate in this manga its the realism. Tekko and Hideo have a realistic relationship. They each have their problems. In the first volume, I really hated her for her drunken abuse of Hideo (not that what she said was off the mark), but here you can really see that they care for each other. Though Tekko is little more than an animated, thoughtless corpse, she still seems to be trying to speak with Hideo and almost seems to be protecting him from the other zombie. Hideo remembers how she would cook for him and, when it comes to killing her, he tries to do it mercifully. Its fucked up, but its all pretty bittersweet too.

From here the rest of the volume goes fairly quickly. Hideo leaves Tekko’s apartment, all the while thinking about how he’ll have to turn himself in to police since he “killed” Tekko. On the streets, there are still people out and about, oblivious to the outbreak around them even though you can hear the sounds of struggle coming from the surrounding houses and apartments as the “diseased” attack friends and loved ones. There are also attacks happening in the streets and people falling from balconies. Hideo ends up being chased, though his attackers end up getting hit by cars. He contemplates leaving his gun behind, but then realizes it would be “abandoning a firearm” and could get him in trouble with the police. (Yes, he just killed his girlfriend and is planning on turning himself in, yet is still worrying about breaking the law. He even wrote a murder confession note after he “killed” Tekko.)

Hideo returns to his workplace only to see Mitani facing off against their boss who, aside from being a zombie, is also pantless with blood streaming from between his legs. Mitani kills him and we learn that he killed the other assistant (I don’t think that guy was ever given a name). Mitani is one creepy sonuvabitch and he acts like its so normal. When Mi-chan disappeared, he got into her house (using a spare key he copied) to check up on her and read her diary, discovering that she was fucking their boss and had planned a threesome with the now-dead nameless co-worker. Mitani is all bent-out of shape that Mi-chan doesn’t say anything nice about him in her diary. The dude is a creepy fucking stalker and pretty nonchalant about killing two people, zombies or not.

Judging from the dialog, Mi-chan became a zombie first and bit off her sensei’s dick while giving him an at-work blow job. She ended up “dead” in the bathtub while the boss tried to play everything off as normal. Mitani, after reading Mi-chan diary and discovering her “affair” with her co-workers, storms back to the office and kills his boss and co-worker. Mi-chan shows up shortly after Hideo stumbles across this scene. Mitani has his bat and Hideo a utility knife. Mi-chan is obviously in the more disgusting part of decomposition. Her eyes are bulging out and her body so bloated that her face is forced upwards. A swollen tongue protrudes from her mouth.

Even as such, she still attacks Mitani. In one of the more disturbing scenes, Mitani thrusts his bat at her, only for her to force it into her mouth, slithering her tongue around it as if she is performing fellatio. Disgusted, Mitani tries to shove the bat up into her skull and give Hideo an opening to cut her throat. Hideo, of course, fails at this, and the two try to tip a shelf onto her. This also fails. They only succeed when Mitani jams a bottle of some sort of accelerant into her throat and lights her on fire (using a lighter Hideo snitched from her back pocket). The explosion blows off her glasses and pigtails, but I can’t understand why this kills her while others survive near decapitation.

Mitani and Hideo escape outside, ignoring the sounds of struggle from other rooms. Mitani, being the sleaze he is, claims they got what is coming to them. He goes on to hope out loud that all the people in his life that he has disliked get infected. He also mentions that “two out of five” in their studio were infected and, when Hideo points out his error, Mitani brushes it off. (So he did kill that other co-worker out of spite.) The two survivors decide to head to the nearest train station and get out of the city. (Am I the only one who thinks this is a fucking bad idea?)

On the way, Mitani suddenly loses a few fingers to a school girl zombie. He stares at the wound in shock and is bitten from behind by another zombie. Mitani is in shock, but tells Hideo that this is the first time he’d ever felt so alive. They are on a pedestrian overpass and, as Hideo watches, a large passenger plane comes dipping down and decapitates Mitani before crashing into the city. Hideo books it out of there. Again, people in the street either seem oblivious or are being attacked themselves. More people struggling in alleyways or falling out of windows. Hideo keeps churning up new pursuers, but, in strokes of unbelievable luck, each and every one is stuck by a vehicle before they can reach him.

Hideo reaches the train, out of breath, and finds that it is filled with passengers going on as normal. Outside there is an occasional glimpse of the chaos: people being attacked in the streets, cars crashing and even a soldier at a military base being chased. Inside the train carriage the passengers don’t see this and are caught up in their own concerns. Hideo takes this time to reflect on things. He takes out Tekko’s teeth and wonders if she busted them out of her mouth on purpose. Thinking of this and how she would always make him meals puts tears in his eyes. This respite is short lived as attacks begin in the next carriage and starts spilling into the one Hideo is occupying. This is when Hideo remembers he is still carrying his gun. The volume ends here.

I am enjoying this manga more and more. I’m not a big fan of the zombie apocalypse “genre”, but I get a kick out of this series. It helps that this is a story of a single person’s survival (as opposed to a group’s like Highschool of the Dead) and that single person is pretty fucked up in the head. Hideo is not a psycho, he’s not a leader (even in his own story), he’s not keen on killing people, but he’s not really a pussy about it either. And then there are his hallucinations and his attempts to strive for “normal’ even if it means deluding himself. Add to that the fact that Hideo himself has been bitten (granted it didn’t draw blood), so we have to wonder if he is also going to change. That there makes this story worth reading.

This last volume raises a lot of questions about the nature of this zombie “disease”, for lack of a better term. Some of those bitten –Tekko and Hideo’s boss — take a long time to “transform”. Tekko’s skin seems to almost become transparent, something that is not seen in any of the other zombies — I don’t think its part of the decomposition process like we saw in Mi-chan. Speaking of Mi-chan, look at what happened to her. She was obviously infected, bit her boss, who then stabbed her in the neck and put her corpse in the studio bathtub. She remains there “dead” for the whole workday. In contrast, Tekko’s landlady “transforms” in the time it takes Hideo to behead Tekko and clean up her apartment. Why the time difference? Is it a matter of where/how the person was bitten? Or am I just thinking too much about this?